Tuesday, 29 March 2011

"Advertising doesn't sell things; all advertising does is change the way people think or feel" (Jeremy Bullmore). Evaluate this statement with reference to selected critical theories.

The term 'advertising' and 'advertisement' have at their root from the Latin word 'advertere' meaning turn towards. Wright 1996 (page 4) defines advertising as follows: 'making it publicly known that an individual or an organisation has benefits, usually products and services, it wishes to offer to an identified target audience in return for some other benefit, usually money'

Advertising is all around us and although we don’t consciously realize it, it attempts to alter how we perceive ourselves or to modify our behaviour. To have an effect the advertisement must engage us with a common language and an emotional response. The whole point of advertising is to capture our attention and to change the way we feel so that a product can be sold or change product allegiance. It is very much a part of everyday life and often adverts hit us from every possible angle. New ideas, innovations come about through human interaction and discussion, so that great thinkers in one generation build from previous generations. Consequently advertising often uses images from former times to manipulate the impression of familiarity to a product.

Advertising encourages the consumer to invest in products using images that we feel can change our lifestyle or our lives by potentially buying more. By using gestures and signs our minds feel a need for what we are being sold, because of the lifestyle associated with it. John Bergers 'Ways of Seeing' gives a deep analysis of publicity within advertising and explains that adverts are directed and aimed at individual people rather than a large audience. As people we understand that 'You are what you have' (John Bergers Ways of Seeing Part 1).

I think many advertisements work in a very subliminal way and for what could be a split second looking at a poster on a wall, the language and images used almost trick you into thinking a different way without even realising. We long and hope to achieve more each day than we did the last and publicity plays on this, giving us an outcome which we eventually hope to reach. 'Publicity is different, it appeals to a way of life we aspire to or think we aspire to but have not yet achieved.' (Bergers Ways of Seeing Part 2, 1972)

Contrary to John Bergers outlook on advertising the characteristics of adverts and the way they work can be decoded in a completely different perspective, 'most people don't believe, don't remember, don't even notice, most advertising. This has always been so and always will be so.' (Stephen Garey, How advertising works). Advertisements could be seen as just serving the purpose of selling a product not tapping into our brains and convincing us to buy. Stephen Garey also states that 'The vast majority of advertising is ineffective and inefficient' but if this was the case then we wouldn’t live in the materialistic world that is today. Advertising and adverts are put out there to do a job, that job is to sell something, but it’s the way we personally understand what we see that changes the way we think.

To establish how we think or feel when we view an advertisement we need to understand the theory behind how adverts work. 'Its not what our message does to the reader, but what the reader does with our message, that determines our success' (Mackay, in Aitchison, 1997, page 25 Cutting Edge Advertising). This expresses that we decide what we think about an advertisement, not the advertisement forcing us to change the way we think. However Mackay also states “We want people to absorb what we're saying without being distracted by their own opinions” (Page 24 Cutting Edge Advertising) This refers to the way adverts are presented, how the way we think and feel is altered through the message that is being delivered. We may not realise but advertising shows us an alternate way of life that is briefly taken in and from then on as individuals decide our future.

Therefore adverts could be argued to change both the way we think and feel how we digest what we view just depends on our own personal characteristics and what appeals to us as a specific person.

To change the way we think or feel an advertisement should contain a deep underlying message that everybody can relate to. Communicating a message that stays in the viewers mind giving more time to understand what has been seen. Advertising has to pin point subjects which we can distinguish personally and this is the key factor to changing how we feel and think. The advert to the left was produced in 1969 by the Cramer Saatchi advertising agency made for the Health Education Council to educate people about unwanted pregnancies. 'Using the classical technique of turning the rational world on its head to demand attention........also using humour to great effect rather than a direct command or criticism which would have been more like to alienate the target audience and alleviate the problem' (Saunders Page 155) At the time most people thought the advert to be quite offensive and shocking due to contraception being a taboo subject to present in public and the image of the man being very far from a stereotype masculine image.
So the advert worked because of its shock tactics and the way everybody can understand the message that it’s putting across. Relationships and emotions are something everybody experiences in their lifetime so immediately you feel like you have a connection with the message. The advert is aimed at men. The statement: 'Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?' highlights to male viewers the responsibility they hold in regards to a pregnancy. By questioning the viewer you are immediately getting them to think on impulse, therefore attempting to change the way they feel. This advert isn't trying to sell a product to the viewer instead it’s selling a message to the viewer altering their state of mind. 'For adverts to work, they must use our commonly shared resources of language in ways that affect us and mean something to us.' (Angela Goddard: The language of Advertising page 4). This statement re-enforces that the language and image in the poster above has been used as a common boundary for people to associate with. By using a Helvetica typeface, a typeface that is very bold and readable this adds to the way the message sticks in the audiences heads, Saunders Page 155 states: 'Although the headline is long the image is sufficiently intriguing to draw the viewer in to understand the message, the words and picture together add up to more than the sum of the parts.'

As previously stated Stephen Garey suggests that 'The vast majority of advertising is ineffective and inefficient.' This advert however would appear to have been very effective and efficient and became world famous by inclusion in 'Time Magazine.'

United colours of Benetton further developed the use of shock images in advertising, by using real images from the real world to 'be noticed and be remembered' (Saunders page 72), rather than imaginary imagery. Benetton connects with its audience on a different level to other advertisers by advertising their company rather than their actual products. Their ‘shock’ adverts confront issues such as birth, death, Aids, poverty and multiculturalism. In order to connect with a wider global audience. Perhaps the most memorable image being the 1991 photograph of a new born baby. The public tending to buy from a specific company because they favour and trust them over others. Benetton, by completely removing the whole sense of purchasing from their adverts, are instead trying to gain the trust of the public so that they are 'noticed and remembered.' Luciano Benetton: 'We believe advertising can be used to say something besides selling a product- something more useful' (Saunders,1992, Page 73). This shows that Benetton are attempting to change the way people think and feel, helping Benetton to become such a successful business. This unusual approach to marketing and advertising attempts to push the boundaries of imagery and controversy by highlighting subjects that relate to the Global Community with a universal Global brand. Benetton's advertising philosophy being the total opposite of the model proposed by John Bergers ('Ways of Seeing') of direct adverts targeted at individuals rather than a large audience. The Benetton poster of the baby changes how the public perceive the company. Benetton is trying to express a deeper message.

All advertising attempts to change our perceptions and alter our thought processes, encouraging us to do things we never would of thought of doing before by modifying our behaviour or lifestyle. Our feelings, emotions, opinions can all be subtly influenced by advertising attempting to alter our decision making process. Advertising changes both the way we think and feel on a range of different levels, when looked at in depth we can often read into it more than what is superficially visible.

A form of criticism, which involves discovering, recognizing and understanding the underlying and unspoken and implicit assumptions, ideas and frameworks of cultural forms such as works of art. First used by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1970s, deconstruction asserts that there is not one single intrinsic meaning to be found in a work, but rather many, and often they can be conflicting. In Derrida's book La Vérité en peintureVincent van Gogh's painting Old Shoes with Laces, arguing that we can never be sure whose shoes are depicted in the work, making a concrete analysis of the painting difficult. Since Derrida¿s assertions in the 1970s, the notion of deconstruction has been a dominating influence on many writers and conceptual artists. (1978) he uses the example of

Designers provide ways into-and out of- the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate tones through masses of information. De-constructivist text takes theories like this to another level of communication, separating and distorting words to break the rules we automatically abide by, It’s this level of experimentation when presenting information that defines de-constructivism.

When reading a body of text we follow each word along the page because of the spaces left in-between each word, without these spaces the reader would be lost. The spaces our eyes naturally skip by when reading, physically exist when the words are spoken verbally due to the reader taking small pauses to breathe. However ‘Spoken Language is perceived as a continuous flow, with no audible gaps.’ The transition from a sound to being recorded on paper gives the creator endless ways of presenting this information, the tones and pauses in each spoken sentence can be translated into space and punctuation so they are seen but not heard. Spaces or indents are a form of vehicle used to make what we’re are reading visually understandable, but we only understand them because we’re used to following the text how it’s most commonly presented.

Typographers arrange text for their audience in a way that we all interpret for individually, however this forces us to navigating around a page according to the direction they want to send us in. Web designers have a pre-planned route for their audience to take when reading through a webpage thanks to hyperlinks and grid systems. They can encourage the readers eyes to notice certain things more than others by solely focusing on the arrangement of text and working with layout. However this takes the whole fun away from reading, reading should be an act of freedom where the viewer can jump from paragraph to paragraph reading only what they want to read, type is a vehicle that can be manipulated in endless ways and this is what reading should be about.

Traditional printing methods such as using a block press evolved from handwritten documents because of how text could be produced accurately and in mass production. I think that this almost limits the possibilities and variations of text that could be created because the hand-drawn feel is lost. ‘Typography has evolved from a stable body of objects to a flexible system of attributes’ This communicates that type can mean so much more to the reader than we realise. Type can define tone of voice, mood and character but when limited to a structure that arranges text in its most simplistic way we loose out on what is being put across to the audience. De-constructivist type is the opposite, and works with multiple ways of expression, using alterations to size and style to make a message more apparent.

‘Like an interpretation of a musical score, reading is a performance of the written word.’ This makes the possibilities endless for Designers to produce work where the type can communicate movement and shape. ‘The reader plays the text as a musician plays an instrument.’ As the reader navigates through each section of text they are sub-consciously prompted how to read by minimal details within the layout of the text. If these limitations were removed then reading would become not just about improving your intellect or engaging with an interest but it would become about being aesthetically pleased by the words in front of you.

The image above is another piece of work by David Carson for Yale University Art Gallery 2010 open day. I picked to analyze this image because of how layered it is and how the type works as image. The first thing I noticed when I looked at this piece was the numbers '2010' on the left hand side because of how bold they are. After instantly digesting the shape of each number within a split second i started to notice the repetition of these numbers tucked underneath different layers of type. I like the depth the collaged text creates and how you can see through the negative space of certain letters to reveal different words. The combination of typefaces works really well, the handwritten type in the background is thin in width, and small in size therefore pushing the larger text to the front of the viewers perspective. Even though when looked at as a whole the information becomes hard to understand the vital guidelines of whats being promoted are still being communicated when your eyes scan smaller areas of the image. This only works because the image appears hard to decipher at a first glance, the mind thinks it complicated, however human nature encourages us to long to find out what the image actually means, making it easier to break down into smaller sections.